Last month Caitlin and I worked with our colleague Teresa Posakony bringing an Art of Hosting workshop to a network of social services agencies and government workers working on building resilience in communities across Washington State. To prepare, we shared some research on resilience, and in the course of that literature review, I fell in love with a paper by Michael Ungar of Dalhousie University.
In Systemic resilience: principles and processes for a science of change in contexts of adversity, Ungar uncovers seven principles of resilience that transcend disciplines, systems and domains of action. He writes:
In disciplines as diverse as genetics, psychology, sociology, disaster management, public health, urban development, and environmental science, there is movement away from research on the factors that produce disease and dysfunction to analyses of capacity building, patterns of self-organization, adaption, and in the case of human psychology, underlying protective and promotive processes that contribute to the resilience of complex systems.
The same is true for my own practice and development around complex facilitation. From a resilience standpoint, my inquiry is, what are the facilitation or hosting practices that help create containers that foster resilience and capacity building?
Ungar’s principles are as follows:
- (1) resilience occurs in contexts of adversity;
- (2) resilience is a process;
- (3) there are trade-offs between systems when a system experiences resilience;
- (4) a resilient system is open, dynamic, and complex;
- (5) a resilient system promotes connectivity;
- (6) a resilient system demonstrates experimentation and learning; and
- (7) a resilient system includes diversity, redundancy, and participation.
I think it’s a moral imperative to build resilience into strategic dialogue and conversations, whether in a short hosted meeting or in a long term participatory process. Participatory work is always a chance to affirm the dignity of human beings. Furthermore, many people come into participatory processes suffering the effects of trauma, much of it hidden from view. While facilitation is not therapy, we cannot practice a “do no harm” approach if we don’t understand patterns of trauma and the way resilience strategies address the effects. Creating “safe enough” space for people to engage in challenging work is itself a resilience strategy. Do it well, and you contribute to long term capacity building in individuals and collectives.
I find these principles inspiring to my complex facilitation practice, because they help me to check designs, and make choices about the kinds of ways I intervene in the system. For example, just off the top of my head, here are some questions and insights we could use to embed our processes with more resilience, related to each principle.
Resilience occurs in contexts of adversity
- Ensure that a group struggles with its work. Don’t be afraid to overload individuals for short periods of time with cognitive tasks (evidenced by confusion, contorted faces, and fatigue). But don’t let that cognitive overload create toxic stress in the system. Your boundary is somewhere between those two points.
- Avoid premature convergence (a Dave Snowden and Sam Kaner principle). Create the conditions so that people don’t simply accept the easy answers without going through the struggle of integrating ideas and exploring emergence.
Resilience is a process
- A resilient system is constantly growing and changing and achieving new levels of capacity, and able to deal with harder and harder stresses. Build-in some adversity to every aspect of organizational life, and you will build capacity building into the organization.
- There is no “final state” of capacity that is acceptable, and so good leadership and facilitation continue to design processes that work the resilience muscle.
- Don’t undertake a “capacity-building project.” Instead, make capacity-building a collateral benefit of engaging in a participatory process.
There are trade-offs between systems when a system experiences resilience
- Watch for the way resilience begins to shift power dynamics and authority in a system. When a group can manage itself well, it requires different support from leadership and different methods of management.
- If the “operating system” of the organization in which a resilient team doesn’t keep pace with the capacity built in the team, a break can occur. Attend to these connections between the resilient parts of the system (that survive by being changed) and the robust parts of the system (that survive by being unchanged).
A resilient system is open, dynamic, and complex
- To my point in a previous post on complex facilitation, you have to work in a complex system with a complexity approach. That means eschewing tendencies to control, closed boundaries, fixed approaches and known outcomes.
- Work with the properties of containers to encourage emergence and self-organization
A resilient system promotes connectivity
- Many of the dialogic methods we use with the Art of Hosting are premised on the fact that everyone in the system is responsible for participating and that relationship is as important an outcome as productivity.
- Working with stories, shared perspectives, diverse identities, and multiple skills in the same process builds connection between people in a system. Solving problems and overcoming adversity together helps individuals become more resilient and connected to each other.
- Any process hoping to survive over time needs to have explicit attention paid to the connections between the parts in the system.
A resilient system demonstrates experimentation and learning
- The very first inquiry of the Art of Hosting community was something like “What if learning together was the new form of leadership we need now?” A good marker of a resilient team or organization is its ability to fail, recover, and learn. Many organizations say they do this. but few actually pull it off.
- Create work in which individuals enjoy solving problems and take pleasure in getting things wrong.
A resilient system includes diversity, redundancy, and participation
- A forest without these features is a tree farm. An organization with these features is a machine.
- Diverse perspectives and lived experiences present opportunities for change and development. They challenge existing ways of doing things and disrupt in helpful ways.
- Redundancy is a feature of living systems. Never be afraid to have the same conversations twice. Or three times.
- Aim for full participation in every meeting. If a person is not participating, the group cannot benefit from their knowledge, experience, or curiosity.
These are just my initial musings on Ungar’s work. They validate many of the practices and methods used in the world of participatory leadership and the Art of Hosting. They also challenge us to make braver choices to create spaces that are harder than we might want them to be so that participants can struggle together to build capacity for change. I truly believe that communities, organizations, and people that develop resilience as a by-product of their work together will be best equipped to face increasing levels of uncertainty and emergence.
In this blog post, I’m going to lift the lid on the core of my facilitation practice. I specialize in complex facilitation for addressing complex issues and this requires a special approach to working with groups. In the Art of Hosting world, we call this approach “hosting” to signify that it has its primary focus on the spaces and processes that we use to host dialogue rather than a more traditional facilitation approach that manages the content, meaning-making, and dynamics.
For me, this approach is defined by a focus on the two key dynamics of emergence and self-organization. After 15 years of trying to figure this all out, I think I finally have this down to a simple set of underlying principles that have been heavily borrowed and deeply influenced by the work of Dave Snowden and Glenda Eoyang.
I first learned the term “complex facilitation” from Dave Snowden. “Complex facilitation” refers to an approach to working with groups that is grounded in good complexity theory. It is an important approach to take when the work you are doing is complex. There is almost always a temptation, when confronted with the uncertainty of a complex system, to default to control in order to drive the process towards a comfortable outcome. This can often result in a process becoming so constrained that there is no possibility for the magic of emergence or self-organization to happen. The desired outcomes of good complex facilitation process are precisely these two states: emergence of meaning and understanding, and self-organization of a group.
Emergence means that a group of people leaves a room with insights that no one person brought into a room with them. When we are confronted with complex problems stemming from emergent phenomenon (culture, conflict, identity, shifting markets, new realities dictated by contexts we don’t control, interpersonal dynamics, “next level” anything…) we need to to create a process that invites emergence. Emergent problems are addressed with emergent solutions.
Self-organization means that a group of people organizes their time, attention and resources in ways that meet the urgent necessity of the moment. It is possible to create processes that allow for self-organization to occur by providing clear attractors and boundaries in a system. Self-organization represents an emergence of structure, which is what is needed to work with emergent ideas. It’s no good going away on an off-site retreat, creating a set of powerful new ideas, and then going back to the office and trying to fit them into pre-existing structures.
Creating conditions for emergence
When we work with complex facilitation Snowden gives us three clear heuristics that can inform design: work with finely grained objects, disintermediate sensemaking, and distribute cognition.
Working with finely grained objects means that groups both generate and work with lots and lots of data points. In my practice, these are generally generated from collecting a large number of small stories and anecdotes about situations. My clients can attest to the huge numbers of post-it notes we go through in group process work, for this reason. These are use to collect data grounded in reality (“tell a story of a time when you made this move…”) and such data objects can be collected together, individually or using online tools. Lately, I’ve fallen in love with Cynthia Kurtz’s approach of Participatory Narrative Inquiry, which is one branch of the work she started with Dave Snowden as they began to create methods for complex facilitation. Other methods like Liberating Structures and large group facilitation methods also help do this.
Disintermediated sensemaking refers to the principle that the people themselves should make sense of their own work. We try to create processes where people are in touch with the raw data objects, so they can find meaning and patterns themselves, without a facilitator or consultant imposing a framework on them. Interpretation of data should rest with the people who are using it. In complexity, how people make meaning of their context dictates how they will act. If a consultant writes a report with their own conclusions, it will always distort the sensemaking participants do. We help this happen in groups by having people hunt for patterns, clusters things into themes and really using tools like Glenda Eoyang’s Human Systems Dynamics and technology like Sensemaker or NarraFirma to help in this work.
Distributed cognition means decentralizing the thinking in the group so that many brains are put to work on a problem and many different perspectives can be brought to bear. This includes having groups of people working in parallel on different issues so that they can generate approaches free of influence from each other in order to enhance creativity. Creating the conditions for diverse perspectives and contradictory actions helps groups to choose general directions of travel together and to test hypotheses and learn more about what paths forward are helpful and which are not.
Creating conditions for self-organization
Complex facilitation works with “containers” which are bounded spaces and time in which emergence is enabled. Containers are made up from a set of constratints acting together to create patterns. Inside these spaces, groups must be able to self organize emergent forms of working if they are to work on emergent ideas. In complex facilitation, you can create the conditions for self-organization by working with the attractors and boundaries that make up the constraints of the container, the exchanges and differences that enable the flows inside the container, and the identities that people take on in the work.
I’ve learned all this from Dave Snowden’s ABIDE framework and Glenda Eoyang’s CDE model and lately, I’ve been blending the lessons and insights from both into a general approach towards working with constraints in facilitated spaces..
In a container Attractors are things that attract and enable coherence and Boundaries are things that constrain and contain, creating separations and allowing us to categorize differences. Think about an attractor as something we all gather around: a fire, a song, a strong purpose, a centre, a meal. Attractors bring us into coherence. Boundaries contain us: a rim, walls, a fence, a roadway, a rule, a fixed amount of time or money. They draw lines between in and out, between what’s included and what’s excluded, and what is the same and different. You cross a boundary when you are no longing sharing a space with others, or when a data object is no longer functionally similar to something else. Taken together, attractors and boundaries form the basic properties of containers, and you can add more or fewer attractors, deepen or lessen attachment to them or tighten or loosen boundaries to create or shift containers.
Exchanges and Differences describe the dynamics inside a container and also act as constraints. Differences give us tensions and potentials for change. You can create more diversity or more homogeneity in a container. The potential for change lies in the differences in a container. Homogeneous systems tend to be very stable and resistant to change, massively diverse systems tend to move and change quickly. Exchanges describe the connections between things in a container and also describe the flows of resources in a system. These might include information, energy, power, and money. Exchanges can be increased or decreased, or given more amplitude or less. They can be channelled through one pipe like a garden hose or distributed through a more intricate structure like a mycelial network.
Identities influence self-organization because they can change the way people think about problems or perform functions in the system. Sometimes you need to CEO to be the most influential person in the system and sometimes you need their staff to be the important ones. Changing and disrupting identities is important for undertaking the three functions that enable emergence. Identity can often be a powerful dark constraint in a system that can hold stuck patterns in place or enable the emergence of new ones. Breaking down existing identities is key before self-organization into new emergent structures takes place. But too much undermining of identities leads to existential chaos, so sensing is critical.
Any questions?
I’ll be hosting an online course with my pals at Beehive Productions next March on this topic, so expect a few more musings over the next several months as I put together that four-week program.
So we had a very interesting election yesterday in Canada and a couple of progressive American friends of mine were hoping from afar that we would reject the kind of right wing racist populism that has infected much of the western world at the moment. This is the response I sent them. For those of you not in Canada, perhaps it will help you understand what happened in our country, written from an unabashedly progressive standpoint. It’s just my take, but here it is for posterity.
We pretty strongly rejected the People’s Party of Canada, the one actual right wing populist party that was running, although the Bloc Quebecois (Quebec’s sovereignties party) gained a lot of support, making some headway on the basis of Bill 21 in Quebec. That provincial bill outlaws public employees from wearing religious symbols in public and is lauded by some Quebeckers as a commitment to secularism and the civil law code principle of “laïcité” which is poorly understood outside of Quebec, but which comes across as racist and discriminatory in practice when seen through the common law lens of our Constitution. (In Canada both civil law and common law have standing, a historical anomaly stemming from the colonial compromise between English and French legal codes) In Quebec the province had to invoke the notwithstanding clause in the Constitution to pass the bill, meaning that it wasn’t subject to the Constitutional provisions to protect minority rights. Many are calling the bill racist and are begging the federal government to take it to Court. While that seems like a practical thing to do, in this political structure, it’s going to be hard.
The BQ and the Conservatives together with a few Liberal abstentions from Quebec can seriously hamper the government on bills that negatively impact Quebec, and as a result this issue might actually be allowed to stand without a Supreme Court challenge in the short term. Likewise, the BQ might join the government in messing up the investigation of corruption and obstruction of justice that needs to go on around the SNC-Lavalin affair that saw Trudeau pressure his Attorney General to allow the company to have a deferred prosecution agreement around some massive corruption they were involved in internationally. That AG, Jody Wilson-Raybould, is an indigenous woman, and she resigned her position, called out the Prime Minister and ran last night as an independent and got re-elected. So she will be back in the House, with a mandate to use her voice.
The Conservatives’ problem was that they pandered to a ton of anti-Trudeau rhetoric in Alberta and Saskatchewan. This has meant that they have won provincial elections there in recent years, but the rest of Canada thinks they are now a narrow-minded, regional-focused, climate change denying, dinosaur party and so the prairies are triumphantly blue and, outside of rural southern Ontario, all alone. They failed to see that Trudeau was actually the only leader willing to both build the pipeline they want (the government bought it last year) and also appeal broadly to the rest of Canada with social programs and policies that could unite interests. Had they voted Liberal, they would have had tremendous influence in Ottawa. Had the Conservatives broadened their appeal nationally, they would have won. As it is, we’re fractured along regional lines again, much as we were in 1993 and Trudeau returns to Ottawa with a minority government and actually coming in second in the popular vote. Folks are saying it’s the weakest mandate ever given to a government in Canadian history.
As a result, the NDP holds the balance of power, which will help get a few big things over the line such as a national pharmacare program, and perhaps a national low income dental care program and possibly some housing and urban infrastructure programs. It will preserve the climate strategy the Liberals have put forward, but that is still too weak to meet our Paris targets. For social programs, it’s the best possible outcome I think, but even with NDP support, the government is in a very weak position and the partisan and regional attacks will keep coming from Quebec and AlSask. That may mean a weak government and another election in a couple of years, and if that happens my guess is that the Liberals will have a better chance to capture conservative voters in Ontario who just hate Alberta moaning all the time even if they are supportive of oil and big business in general.
Interesting times. The Liberal party has not been good on progressive issues, especially indigenous issues, despite their rhetoric towards reconciliation. When the centre-right parties are weak, they tend to move right to canibalize the Conservatives’ soft support. Having the NDP holding the balance will help check them, but it’s not a massive progressive repudiation of populism.
Maybe it’s fair to say that it’s a defensive play against hate and it seems like our election was relatively protected from outside influence, hacks and Russian bots. They were definitely trying, but we are blessed not to have a two party system. It means that when things fracture, they do so in a way that creates more diversity rather that staunch and stark divisions. Makes it harder to govern, but then I think that should be a feature of Canadian politics and not a bug.
If you’re Canadian, why not weigh in here and offer perspective for folks reading this outside of Canada. What’s your take?
I Love the rain. The fall rains here in Bowen Island come heavy and steady starting in mid September and going through to December. They fill creeks and create the conditions for the salmon to return. You never know how many will return every year but without the rains they can’t taste their home stream or in ocean.
For some reason I have been really craving the rain this year. Waiting for it like people in the North wait for the ice to break up in the spring. It feels like a release somehow. Todayt we are expecting about 50mm of rain and this morning I headed out in it to cast my votes in our federal election. The forest is luminescent with fungus and lichen and the forest floor is covered in mushrooms. This weekend I fasted on fresh boletes and oyster mushrooms and spent time drying some.
Walking in the heavy rain is wonderful when you have the right gear. Layers of clothes with a water proof outer layer and good goretex boots does the trick. Walking quietly in a rainy forest whilst remaining sheltered from the water is a cozy and almost spiritual experience. It brings one into a contemplative mind, tucked beneath a hood, rain spattering on my head,, the constant sound of water flowing all around. Returning home to dry by the fire or tucking into the pub in the late afternoon for a quiet chat with the regulars now that the tourists have all gone. All of it is west coast spiritual practice.
Today we have a classic southeasterly wind and heavy rain. And tomorrow skies will clear and the winds will back strongly from the northwest, making it a good day to head over to the west side of our little island and watch the waves crash on the Cape after travelling 100 kms down the Salish Sea. It’s not a long fetch and not a heavy swell but the wind fills the face, the sun is glorious out over the Strait of Georgia, and the blue of sea and sky is flecked with brilliant white foam from crashing waves and chaotic seas.
It’s nice to be home.
A couple of years ago, my friend Pauline LeBel and I were discussing ways to increase learning about indigenous peoples amongst our neighbours on Bowen Island where we live. We live squarely in the traditional territories of the Squamish Nation, and in thinking about how as settlers we should all orient ourselves to our indigenous hosts, the phrase “knowing our place” came up. Pauline employed it as the title for a series of readings and events that she has curated for a number of years now on Bowen Island. I use it as a kind of heuristic to answer the question of what is the role of settlers in supporting the struggles and aspirations of the First Nations within whose territories we live and work.
When I first arrived in Vancouver in 1994 I was working for the BC Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres. I attended a meeting at the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre at which Leonard George, then chief of Tsleil-Waututh, opened with his father’s well known prayer song. He introduced the song as “the Coast Salish National Anthem” and told the story of how his father, Chief Dan George, has gifted the song to the Chiefs of the various Salish-speaking Nations around the Salish Sea, where we live. It made a huge impact on me, and I instantly understood what it meant to be living here. A few years later, when I asked if it was a song I could sing for others, to help them understand in whose country we are really standing, his eyes lit up and he said “of course!”
Leonard was an incredible singer and anyone who heard him sing this song before his voice changed due to cancer will attest to how it made the hairs on your arms stand up and sent a shiver through the spine. It is an incredible song, and in Leonard’s hands, it was a profound spiritual experience. Here he is singing it to open the International AIDS Conference in Vancouver in 1996:
From time to time, I get to sing this song for others and it is almost always the case that they have never heard it, no matter how long they have lived in these territories. On Friday I was asked to come to Rivendell Retreat Centre (where I am on the board) to sing it for a group of refugee families that were having a Thanksgiving weekend retreat. There were six families from Eritrea and two from Syria and they had all been in Canada for less than two years.
About two thirds of the group were children, mostly elementary school and younger. When I pulled out my drum to sing the song, several of the Eritrean kids cam running over and started singing what sounded like this song. When I played a verse of the song and asked if that was what they were singing they said yes. Apparently they had been taught the song in school and they all knew it.
So yesterday was the first time I ever sang Chief Dan George’s prayer song – the Coast Salish National Anthem – for Vancouver area residents accompanied by people that knew it off by heart: eight refugee kids from Eritrea who sang with great gusto and enthusiasm and pride. They knew where they were and they knew why we were singing that song.
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